this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Talk about missin the point bro. That point being "paid services are universally inferior to free ones even when excluding the variable of cost"
It's a trade off. "Free services" typically require more leg work and can come with legal or security risks. I used to have a great XBMC & torrenting setup years ago. I spent significant time customizing it and various plugins, extending scripts etc. I had fun, and took necessary precautions. Millions wouldn't. Some are happy to pay €9/month to another evil corp for convenience (where it works for them).
Your setup is (was?) awesome but it's not necessary these days. An online search for free media streaming sites and an ad-blocker (but of course) brings up sites with at least the same polish as Netflix (the only site i have experience with) and full 1080p. When i briefly used my sister's Disney+ and my in-laws' prime, it was noticeably worse than my favorite bookmarked free streaming sites, not to mention i needn't wonder if the service owns all the seasons of the show i wish to see
I agree that there are many great free streaming sites out there, with 1080p and good quality.
But quality is still an advantage of paid services (or acquirung the larger files in other ways). Streaming with higher bitrate costs way more bandwidth (= money) while being marginally better.
It's noticeable though, if you have a good, large enough display. Especially darker scenes suffer from low bitrate. On my phone I don't notice it at all.
That's even true for high bitrate. E.g. I've even compared a Reacher WEB-DL to BluRay remux, and the latter was noticeably better — not that it's worth the additional storage usage.